Peak oil -- hybrids sales

My gawd . . . with all the additional hybrids it'll bring to market, just THINK how many run-aways there'll be.

The Saudis are very secretive about how difficult it is to pressure feed their mega fields. It may be that they don't want to scare anybody how far we already ARE into PO.

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I would disagree with you here. I'd say Europe and Japan would be OK but the USA (apart from the hybrid owners) would suffer like it did back in 2008.

Most cars here in the UK are either diesel or economical petrols of the like not sold in the US. Hybrids are also becomming more common now also.

I remember seeing news reports back in 2008 of people in the US pushing cars to the pumps because they had run out of gas and couldn't afford to fill them. Scary stuff. But the cars they couldn't afford to run were not hybrids or small VW Golfs, but some V8 Buick or the like.

I know we suffered in Europe because of our high tax on fuel but in some way this does seem to even out the ups and downs of oil prices and also, we are already used to high fuel costs.

Fuel prices are rising here and I know some of my taxi driver colleagues are starting to suffer, but with my Prius it is hardly making a dent - yet. Fuel would have to double before I start paying what my colleagues are paying now! It's the knock on effect on the economy that worries me more

 

Well Bob, I know you like your figures so that's a job for you for today. Go compile a list of the hybrids up to date and are you able to include Europe (UK too?) and Australia?

Would be interested in seeing the numbers.

 

Fuel price spikes don't only increase the volume of hybrid sales, they also really spur on the development of electric vehicles. I'll bet that as soon as we see more price spikes like 2008 and worse then all the manufactures will start fast-tracking their EV vehicles big time.

 

Helps the hybrid companies that make HIGH mpg hybrids. Then you have GM. "Hey, lets put our BEST hybrid system in a LAND BARGE! ... that way it'll get boosted to 19mpg". Oh yea ... that's what I'd buy, when gas starts heading for $8 or $9 per gallon. Maybe now that Lutz is gone again, things will improve ... thinking wise. Rather than NEVER thinking about that day, GM will start working towards the quickly approaching 35mpg CAFE standard. I hope they won't try to lobby to over turn the standard as it approaches.


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The latter part of 2010 will see a bunch of new hybrids. As soon as the new mpg and emissions rules become effective in a few years (2015?), hybrids will take over the market. The media is keeping low on this because there are a lot of ICE cars that have to be sold.

$4 gas last year had more to do with oil futures speculation than with supply-demand.
Anybody who watched the congressional hearings is probably aware of that. It was not heavily covered by the media. Speculation has subsided for now--with the economy stuttering. But it could re-emerge since the politicians seem to have done nothing to restore pre-2000 regulation, when you had to buy oil to buy futures.

My advice is to buy a hybrid while gas is cheap and demand is low.

 

does anybody remember the late 70's?




back then they were predicting that we would run out of oil by 1995

 

I think you are right on the 2015 model year (2014). We should see lots of lithium battery capacity on line by then, plug-in hybrids, and regular hybrid technology getting less expensive. I would expect many vehicles to have at least a mild hybrid version that will boost city mileage at least 25%.

On the news part of the article, IMHO it is great that they are addeding the new demand picture to the model. I don't think they adequately modeled the impact of opec's production limits which is strange since they came from an opec nation. I still think opec will not ramp up supply with the increased demand which keeps the pesimistic (early) model of peak oil at 2020. Note the model I'm looking at would have higher oil prices in 2015 than if opec increased supply to satisfy some of the increased demand in the articles model.

 

" I still think opec will not ramp up supply with the increased demand which keeps the pesimistic (early) model of peak oil at 2020. "

That would be the optimistic view of "Peak". The pessimistic view is that we ALREADY peaked. Technically, we did peak...but we don't know if there will be a new larger peak before the decline. Most think we are at a plataue, due in part to OPEC constraints but mostly because of the ability of recessions to lower demand (or conversely being caused by high prices).

 

Does anybody think that someone in Kuwait might benefit financially from this prediction?

 

Bob, I disagree that Japan will be in good shape, due to their lack of reources, especially oil. They are heavily dependent on imports. However. they are far more efficient in their use of energy because of that fact, while we in the US are profligate in its use, largely because of history when we supplied much of our energy cheaply and domestically.

That has been changing rapidly over the last two decades. Gasoline in this country is far cheaper than it ought to be in my opinion At $6/USG we could cut our consumption drastically, in addition to stimulating the use of alternatives.

The next decade is going be interesting.

 

I actually meant what I wrote. Of course their are scenarios like chavez burning Maracaibo, or iran nuking iraq that are more pessimistic than the mainstream estimates.

2008 had the highest production world wide of any previous year. The 2009 actual figures are not confirmed yet. I'm not sure who the people are that think production will be lower in 2010 then 2008, but I doubt they are looking at the production figures or the opec quotas.

Ofcourse as someone mentioned, their is a reason why kwait would want to bias the study. There are members that would like to reduce current production quotas to increase prices and have more future reserves to sell. Then again this may also be in the United States best interest.